In the End
by Argenteus Draco
Summary: The Battle of Hogwarts, told from the slightly skewed prospective of one Draco Malfoy. Prequel to Hawthorn and Unicorn Hair.


In the End 

The Great Hall – the entire castle – was in chaos. Debris cluttered the pathways. Blood clung to the walls in a gruesome parody of Gryffindor red. People were screaming curses, jostling each other, shouting for friends and family members. Draco, trying to escape, found himself forced into the Great Hall with everyone else, pushed up against the oak doors, unable to leave, unable to fight.

Something – an elbow, a curse, he couldn't be sure – collided with his head, and he sank to his knees against the wall, momentarily blacking out. When he came to he was staring through a sea of legs running in every direction. Someone nearly stepped on his hand, and he drew it protectively against his body as he stood up again.

It was hard to tell who was doing what, or moving where, or even who exactly was fighting whom. He searched the crowd for familiar faces. He'd lost Goyle shortly after fleeing the Room of Requirement, but there was no sign of him here. His parents were on the other side of the hall; he tried to call out to them, but his voice failed. He caught Aunt Bella's eye just before she fell… saw his teachers thrown backwards… watched a shield charm fly up in front of the Dark Lord, and wondered who among them had the power to block Voldemort's curses. And then…

"Harry! HE'S ALIVE!"

The screams and cheers died as suddenly as they'd started. As silence settled over the room, it seemed to Draco as though the air was becoming thicker. He struggled to breathe, and thought vaguely of electric charges surrounding him, suffocating him, which was absurd, because he knew nothing about electricity…

The crowd was backing away from the duelers, transfixed as Harry Potter and the Dark Lord circled each other, wands pointed straight ahead—

—Where was his wand? His brain was fogging up, he couldn't think clearly… He'd lost it somewhere, and his mother had given him hers. He could remember how it felt all wrong in his hands: too heavy, too thick, it didn't have the same spring that his had. And then he'd met Potter in the Room of Hidden Things, and the wand had rolled from his fingers. It was lost in the fire…

He chocked as the fire threatened to engulf him again. He shut his eyes against the flames, the burning heat and stinging smoke, but it was impossible to banish the image. He could almost feel Goyle's weight in his hands; hear the pounding of Crabbe's footsteps echoing down another isle, only to be overcome by the roaring inferno behind him. He could feel himself slipping… he was going to black out again…

…But not before he reached for Harry Potter's hand in the darkness…

There was a hand around his, and another cupping the back of his head. There was a warm stickiness, from when he'd fallen against the stone floor, underneath that hand. His eyes fluttered half open. It was his mother holding him, weeping silently, and his father examining him. He recognized the large, cold, slightly calloused hands. But he'd never know them to be as gentle as they were now, tracing a shallow cut over his eye, another along the corner of his mouth. He tried to speak, to tell him he was all right, to apologize to his mother for loosing her wand. But though he felt his lips move, he couldn't manage to form the correct words. His mother silenced him by placing a slender finger over his lips, and he momentarily slipped back into memories of his childhood, when she'd held him and read him children's stories.

"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"

The words cut through the fog surrounding him; mention of the former headmaster had done that for quite a while now. His eyes snapped open, and he stared straight ahead of him at a spot somewhere in between the two wand points. For one wild second that stretched into an eternity for Draco, he thought he saw Dumbledore standing there, in the middle of the hall, regarding him with that piercing blue stare. He was back on the tower, the wind whipping his hair around his face. His hand shook around an invisible wand, a wand that no longer belonged to him…

His mother was shaking him now, pleading with him to respond. He smiled weakly; he was still too disoriented to form a better response. The words being shouted back and forth were confusing themselves with his mother's voice. "Dumbledore… the Elder Wand… Snape, killed…" He was slipping again, back into his mother's stories. He'd always liked the Tale of the Three Brothers…

"_There were once three brothers who were traveling along a lonely, winding road at midnight—"_

He'd reached the bridge, but his parents remained at the other end of the road, calling him back. He turned, he started to walk back, but before he'd taken his second step a cold, shrouded hand gripped his shoulder.

"And Death spoke to them—" 

His father was there again. He'd found an abandoned wand; Draco could feel the smooth wood pressing against his neck while his father muttered the incantations. The pain he hadn't noticed in his semi-conscious state subsided; the swelling lessened; the wound closed neatly. He took a few deep, steadying breaths.

"—_a wand more powerful than any in existence—"_

The Elder Wand… Now that his head had cleared, he could make sense of what Harry and the Dark Lord were saying. Not that it made much sense for the two of them to be discussing the finer points of a fairy tale. He shook his head again as his parents helped him to his feet.

"The Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it."

His mother's hand tightened on his shoulder, and Draco's mind – which just a moment ago hadn't been able to process anything – now seemed to be working in overdrive. Once again he was plunged back into memories of the night on the tower. Hadn't he disarmed Dumbledore before Snape had killed him? A failure, the others had called it, a moment of weakness. But for the first time he didn't think of it as such. It had been instinct. After all, when asked which Hallow he would choose if he could, he had always picked the wand, and his father had praised him for it. He realized, just a second before Harry said it, what had been in Dumbledore's hand that night.

"The true master of the Elder Wand—" _Oh God_, he thought, and the words were coming far too slowly for his rapidly beating heart, "—was Draco Malfoy."

His parents looked up at him, shock written over their faces, but Draco could only continue to watch the two wizards in the middle of the room. On one side, the Lord he had agreed to serve before he'd known what would be required, who had tortured him in return, lead to the downfall of his family, and very nearly ripped them apart forever. On the other, the boy he'd once offered his hand to in friendship, who had rejected him and suspected for six years what he would become. The boy who had saved his life twice that night, despite everything that had transpired between them. The boy who had pulled his wand from his hand weeks before, and now pointed those ten inches of hawthorn and unicorn hair directly at Voldemort.

Draco smiled ruefully as he realized which one he'd aided in the end.


End file.
